Ourselves : A BL Horror Novel

Ch 14 - Drive Thru Your Past

The vanilla creme colored SUV rolled through the streets of the sprawling metropolis of Avalon, Washington as the sun rolled down into the oceans that churned out past the gray sand beaches that surrounded the metropolis.. Inside of the vehicle a man watched the different place she had once been before slide past the tinted windows. It was a living, breathing entity, this city and he knew many of it's secrets.An alleyway the SUV moved past had been where his large hands had broken a man's arm for answers. A cafe on a corner had been where he and his rag tag crew of mafia lower ranked men had always come after a job.

He remembered how silly he had felt dressed in a black tailored suit with someone's blood dried across the once crisp white shirt eating a Monte Cristo in that rustic cafe. He had been chewing it when the waiter, a beautiful lean teenage boy dressed as a girl sneaking glances at him from behind the black plastic tray he had served them with hovered.He wondered now, what that strange young man had seen in his brown eyes and large curved nose worth blushing over.

The SUV continued it's trek to the city outskirts and the designer wonderland of glass and metal towers gave way to shorter broken brick and dirty glass structures that he felt had more culture in them. Than the superficial beauty of the skyscrapers behind them. Looking at these reminded him of times colored by old blood to always have a hint of burgundy to them in his mind.

He remembers being a small boy with thick greasy dark hair and holes in his clothes trailing after his tall, sun browned father. He knew the sidewalks and their cracks so well he never tripped even though his shoes were either too big or too small. The ghettos that the US government had used for immigrants during the Third World War still existed even if the government had forgotten about them now.

He remembered what being a small Thai boy here had been like. His skin to light for the darker toned children who spoke his language to have anything to do with him. They had hit him when he had tried to play with them. But his darker vanilla creme skin had made him too dark for the white children to play with. They had called him "Chink" because of his sharp large eyes and curved nose and large ears. He had wanted to understand what it meant but knew he couldn't ask his father,Perth Pravit refused to teach him anything but how to be invisible.So he had walked down to the corner store and asked Ama Lee Gu who always sold him sweets with a smile. Ama Lee was an older woman who remembered a time before the bombs and viruses had ravaged Asia. He was sure she would understand the word and explain to him why it was bad to be "Chink Eye'd".

She had frozen on the spot and looked at him as if he were a stranger and not the son of Perth Pravit. Her long black and gray hair swayed as she weighed something inside that moon shaped head of hers before she licked her thin lips and spoke quietly. They had been alone in the general store that no longer had Government aid to keep the shelves fully stocked. Some shelves were bare, and there was a cardboard box upfront for donations to anyone who couldn't buy food. Her almost expired items were in there.

"Chink Eyed is a rude way of saying Chinese Person. I'm sorry those boys said that too you Cherry Blossom," Ama Lee said, her voice reminded him of a breeze passing through a tree's leaves. He had made a face of confusion, he wasn't sure how to process it. He had never been insulted before by someone who wasn't his daddy. A burn was starting in his small chest and he felt the burn in between his eyes and spread to them as his face grew hot. Ama Lee gathered him up in her long frail arms and held him as he cried but he didn't know why. He tried to speak against the soft blue dress she wore.

"But I'm not Chinese I'm Thai...I don't get it. I don't know any Chinese people but if I did I'd let them play with me, I'd let anyone play with me." Keaton Pravit had said against the fabric and the warm scent of roses that came from the perfume she always wore filled his nose. Above his head, the sixty year old dark eyes of a woman who had lived through the Trump administration looked out the clean shop windows at the world they lived in. That same quiet fire in her burned for it as it had since the bombs had fallen. To make a child cry this way was almost more than she could bare. She held him tight and set her mouth to speak as tears she wouldn't let fall burned at the corners of her own eyes.